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Political Consequence of Delayed-Dependent Development On The Periphery of Western Europe, It Is
Political Consequence of Delayed-Dependent Development On The Periphery of Western Europe, It Is
As Philippe Schmitter points out in his article Reflections on Mihail Manoilescu and the
rather difficult to analyze the cosmopolitan thinker Mihail Manoilescu’s works in order to
In order to understand Manoilescu’s work we first need to understand who he was and what
role he played in Romanian history. It is also important to underline the fact that he is the most
known Romanian economist of the twentieth century and he brought some Romanian realities in the
Manoilescu was born on December 21, 1891 in Tecuci. His father was a teacher with
socialist sympathies and his mother, Natalia Grigoreanu, was the inheritor of the old Tăutu family
of boyars.
Between 1902 and 1910 he followed with exceptional results the Iaşi National High school
where he was classmate with Cezar Petrescu and Victor Iamandi. After graduating high school, he
had to give up juridical studies due to lack of money and opted for a military career which he
considered surer. He studied at the Polytechnique in Bucharest between 1910 and 1915.
In 1913 he took part in the military campaign in Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War and
in 1914 he participated at public manifestation in favor of Romania’s entering in the First World
After the ending of the First World War Manoilescu was immediately named (at the
recommendation of Tancred Constantinescu) sub director at the Industry and Commerce Ministry.
In the same year he was promoted to director and then general director of the ministry.
1
SCHMITTER Philippe C.”Reflections on Mihail Manoilescu and the Political Consequences of Delayed-Dependent
Development on the Periphery of Western Europe”, in Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania: A Debate on
Development in a European Nation, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978,p. 117
2
PAIUSAN Robert, Mihail Manoilescu: repere biobibliografice, Bucuresti, Editura ASE, 2005, p. 5
1
Between 1926 and 1927 Romania was governed by the Government formed by A.
Averescu. After being elected Member of Parliment, Manoilescu was named sub secretary of state
in the Finance Ministry and elaborated a number of laws such as the harmonization of salaries,
monetary stability etc. In 1927 he made an official visit in Italy in order to sign a commercial
bilateral treaty and to obtain Italy’s recognition of Bessarabia’s unification. He was greeted by
After the fall of the Averescu Government and the forming of a new Liberal Government
Manoilescu joined the Restoration movement, whose main goal was to bring Carol on the
Romanian throne after he had lost his rights. He met with Carol several times in France and he was
In the fall of 1927 Manoilescu had to face an intensely meditated process. He was arrested
on October 23, on his arrival from Paris with some confidential letters from Carol. He was charged
with carlist complot but he was later that year acquitted. On November 18, he was thanking G.
Taşcă threw a letter for his help. The letter ended with the rhetorical question: your gesture and the
In 1929, Manoilescu becomes a member of the National Peasant Party after being asked to
do so by Carol. The following year, he had numerous encounters with Carol, who was ready to
regain his rights. Manoilescu elaborated a governing program which included a reformation of the
democratic state (by giving more authority to the monarch, limiting the powers of the Parliament
and so on).
Carol came back on the throne in June, 1930 and he demanded the Government ruled by
Iuliu Maniu to name Manoilescu Minister of Communication and Public Works. During the
Mironescu Government Manoilescu became Minister of Commerce and Industry and kept this
3
Paiusan, p. 17
2
In 1931 he became governor of the National Bank and got involved in the Blank Deal, being
dismissed after refusing to support Carol’s attempts to save the bank using money from the state
One year later he became senator of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry college and
started a magazine called Lumea Noua (New World) whose aim was to make known his ideas.
where he demanded an introduction of the corporatist system. In the same year he founded the
In 1936 he met several important personalities such as Antonio Salazar, Alfred Rosenberg
and Walter Funk (he met the last 2 at a Nazi congress in Nurnberg where he was guest of honor).
In 1938 he attended, in Rome the manifestations organized by the fascist party in order to
celebrate 2000 years since the birth of the Roman emperor Octavian August. After the starting of
the Second World War he sustained the fascist and Nazi cause.
In 1940 Manoilescu became minister of Foreign Affaires during the Ion Gigurtu
Government. Although he was popular in both Germany and Italy this did not help Romanian
foreign policy. As a result, on August 30, 1940 Manoilescu and Valer Pop were signing the Vienna
Award which stated that Maramureş, Bihor and Transylvania were now the territory of Ukraine.
Manoilescu blamed Carol for his disastrous image in Romania and said that he was responsible for
the “complete ruining of his moral position in the soul of the people and of the army”.4
Between October 1944 and December 1945 he was held in detention and accused of being
the main cause of the country’s disastrous state. The accusation was later on dropped.
In 1948 Manoilescu was imprisoned for political reasons and he died in Sighetul Marmaţiei
4
Paiusan p. 25
5
Paiusan p. 63
3
He was a very active man, full of ideas and eager to set them in practice. He is described by
Schmitter as being “ more an ideologue than a theorist in the simple sense that he tended to deal
“projectively” with social, economic, and political relationships as they should be-or, better put as
they should become- rather than with the realistic analysis of how and why they actually were”.6
Perhaps the two most important ideas of Maihail Manoilescu are corporatism and
CORPORATISM
As Schmitter had so accurately underlined, Mihail Manoilescu is best known for his lifelong
passion or better expressed “obsession” for what he believed to be the ultimate solution to all the
social and economic problems of the early XXth century State: corporatism.
Manoilescu had predicted in his “Le Siecle du corporatisme” that “the twentieth century will
be the century of corporatism just as the nineteenth was the century of liberalism”.
But what Manoilescu referred to as corporatism had in fact little to do with the traditional
meaning of corporatism as being “universitas personarum”, according to which people of the same
profession may associate and create a body meant to protect their common interests.
of transformation that the world political economy and its attendant of international stratification
were undergoing”7. As such he denies the concept of natural harmony, approving the change that
liberalism and capitalism had brought in the XIXth century. Moreover he argues that corporatism
will integrate the individual into society but do it through more capitalist rules and regulations.
Lastly Schmitter understood that Manoilescu believed corporatism to be more than just a temporary
and class depended solution, he thought of it as being appropriate regardless of the fact that
corporatism was in fact class related and had to maintain the status quo.
6
Schmitter, p. 118
7
Schmitter, p. 124
4
Manoilescu had in “Theorie” stated the end of territorial expansions. His views were
Eurocentric as Schmitter puts it, but he did manage to clearly observe the fact that all the borders
were becoming fixed and thus made territoriality a constant further enhancing in Manoilescu views
the need for the society and the economy to be organized differently.
The ideology needed to promote such a change was shaped due to the events of the 1920’s
and 1930’s such as: “the collapse of the prewar liberal economic order, the rising demand for
equality of benefit and status among nation-states, the definitive demarcation of territoriality”8.
Manoilescu believes that corporatism would first appear where these tensions had more accurately
asserted themselves: the southern and South-Eastern part of Europe, and from there on they would
But seeing such a determined attitude towards corporatism can easily make one ask why
would Mihail Manoilescu choose this in the first place? He had many arguments some of which
-Firstly corporations would provide the common individual with ranks and loyalties and
would be able to resolve all the complex problems that society has because of its attributes.
-Secondly corporations would allow the state to grow from an economical point of view as
security, external defense, foreign affairs and national propaganda in total disregard to
The state becomes the most solicited arbitrator, being obliged to recognize all conflicts
emerging from these tensions and solve them. Moreover the state should foresee these conflicts and
through its own power of initiative act in national interests above all other.
-Last but not least corporations would extinguish the “spirit of class” and replace it with
national solidarity. Thus social conflicts and upheavals would disappear and a harmonious
8
Schmitter, p.125
5
organization of society would replace them.
Manoilescu believes social differences will be a thing of the past and that solidarity and
states it would be created first by the periphery through an incredible burst of group consciousness
and later transmitted to the central area where its adoption would be quite natural and harmonious.
The owning class and the working class would unite forces as to ensure survival, both of them
Therefore the best way to make social differences disappear was to recognize their existence
and provide the individuals with separate but equal representation as Manoilescu said: “There is
nothing more natural than every man being able to contribute to the state through the professional
group he is a part of. Nothing is more logical than that in Parliament the peasants be represented by
peasants, the industrial workers by industrial workers, the industrial owners and merchants by
In the Romanian case Manoilescu wished to end ethnic minority classes not class difference.
“We are not a multinational state: we are a Romanian national state with foreign minorities. That is
why national corporatism creates a system of institutions which will assure a just balance between
Romanians and minorities in each category of labor, and will reestablish equilibrium wherever
classes is produced inside the corporations. So will they in Romania create equilibrium between
minorities”. 10
Manoilescu believed that the XXth century would bring a change in the psychological manner
in which people perceive moral and social values and these would as a consequence shift from
individualist and liberal ideas to ideas that promote the achievement of collective goals, based on
the functional importance of each and every person in society. The highest of these goals remained
9
MANOILESCU Mihail, “Romania: Stat national-corporativ”, Bucuresti, 1938, p. 4 [our translation]
10
MANOILESCU Mihail, “Romania: Stat national-corporativ”, Bucuresti, 1938, p. 27[our translation]
6
that of the national interest and well being, an aspect that obviously asserted in an indirect manner
Mussolini, the true creator of corporatism believed that it was the only normal, regular and
natural manner of organizing a state and although he rejected liberalism and socialism he wished to
keep the positive aspects that they both had: he promoted the solidarity and equality that socialism
had but did not wish to create an ever present state; he guarantees freedom of initiative just as
liberalism did but worked towards ensuring the elimination of unjust and free competition. This
Corporations become bodies of representation and are responsible for every member they
have and all the legal and social actions they perform obliging the state to become no more than an
arbitrator, the holder of national interest, to which if any corporation goes against is forced to
Corporatism in Italy was entirely dependent on the way Mussolini organized the state as
Manoilescu himself observed: “Fascism of the pure Italian style presupposes a Mussolini. That
His admiration for Mussolini and his ever growing totalitarian tendencies to express
corporatism led to a shift in his perception which ultimately defined his politicology: the single
party.
MONOPARTITISM
In this book Manoilescu changed his vision about the best route to state corporatism.
“While the nineteenth century was the era of political pluralism, the twentieth century will be the
11
MANOILESCU Mihail, “Corporatism romanesc” in Lumea Noua, I, 3, June 1932, p. 6 [our translation]
7
Between the two works, Siecle du corporatisme and Le Parti unique, his view changed a lot.
The single party became the “indicated tutor” of corporatism, but finally it is not clear if this
A single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party
forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run for election.
In his book, Le Partie Unique, Manoilescu explains which are the steps for establishing a
“Ce sont deux institution qui, au moins sous leur forme contemporaine, présentent une
originalité et une nouveauté incontestables et qui seules parviennent à donner un relief au paysage
In the first part he speaks about the necessity of establishing a single-party system instead of
For him it is a system that divides the nation, and in order to underline this point he cites
Goebbels: “tout ce qui pouvait séparer les hommes de la meme patrie, constituent normalement une
Another advantage of the single-party system is the rationalisation of the state, and in order to
explain it Manoilescu presents, the example of the Oriental agrarian countries that are well
organised and have no problem with discontinuity. This is the main point of this part. The
hierarchical organisation of the single-party is, for him, the best way of granting the order and the
12
trad. ’’it is these two institutions that, at least in their contemporan form, present incontestanle originality and novelty
and are the onlt ones that manage to model today’s political peysage. These two institutions are corporatism and
monopartidism’’ [our translation] MANOILESCU Mihail, Le Partie unique, Les Oeuvres Francaise 1936, p. 1
13
trad. ’’everything that can separate the people of the same country constitues normally a base for forming a party.’’
[our translation] GOBBLES M., Angriff of 20 August 1928
8
The slogan of Manoilescu is “l’ordre, la probité, la continuité” 14.
Manoilescu’s idea is that there are clear steps that a revolutionary party has to take before and
after becoming a single party system. He divided those steps in Temporary functions and
Permanent functions.
Finally the single-party is like a superior entity that has the rule of organising a corporatist-
state. He made the difference between pure corporatism an partial corp, the first is an utopian idea,
and so the partial corporatism is the only one possible, but this means that a single-party is
Finally Manoilescu spoke about a “force commune”, a common force that is the main
characteristic of all new parties, that is necessary for taking power, but is not clear if this force is a
In the second part of the book Manoilescu analyses some parties that he considers the most
14
“ordre means order, continuité means continuity and probité is “vertu qui consiste à observer scrupuleusement les
régles de la morale sociale” Dictionary Le Petit Robert, Paris 2004.
9
In this he speaks also about “les parties uniques embryonnaires”, (the embryons of single
parties) meaning the new parties that have the possibility of creating a single-party regime. He
considers in his analysis all the parties that have in their program the objective of abolishing the
Regarding Romania, this part is very short and very superficial, he speaks about the Iron
Is the first one to emerge hystorically, but the paradox is that all the other successive single-
parties became right wing regimes. This is the only single party based on a single social class, the
Manoilescu consider the communist party an exception between the others single-party, for
him “la dictature du proletariat n’est qu’un nouvel absolutism avec changement de maitres”16.
He speaks about the Russian population like a numerous, inconsistent, apolitical and
amorphous group of people and in this conditions it is simple for a minority (the Bolshevik party) to
In Russia there were no political parties that could be a real problem for the single-party, this
is the reason why the Bolshevik didn’t have problems with the liquidation of adversaries and with
Regarding the re-education of the population, Manoilescu considers the Russian system of
propaganda very good organised: Russian people don’t receive any information from others
countries and in this is way they don’t want to change their conditions.
15
MANOILESCU Mihail, p. 32
16
trad. “the dictatorship of proletarians is a new absolutism that only change arguments” [our translation]
MANOILESCU Mihail, p. 32
10
This is the party founded by Kemal Ghazi in 1919. Manoilescu considers this an atypical
exempt of single party, but he says: “l’originalitè meme de ce partie souligne le caractére universel
de l’institution du partie unique qui, malgré les différences morphologiques, realise toujours les
memes fonctions politiques nouvelles, imposes par les impératifs de notre siècle”17.
The first difference is that in Turkey the single-party is not a reaction against liberalism,
because there, the concept of liberalism is not well known. The necessity of a single-party came
from the necessity of having a political unity of the nation in order to face the problems coming
Secondly this party became a single-party only because there weren’t other parties, it was a de
Finally Manoilescu notices that in Turkey they organise a system based on liberalism but with
a single-party.
In Italy the Fascist party was born as a reaction against the liberalism and the multy-party
system. After the Treaties of Paris the majority of Italians were unhappy and were afraid of
communism; these are for Manoilsecu the two reasons way fascism was very successfully in Italy.
Before taking power, the fascists had already eliminated the contrary ideologies and prepared the
public opinion.
For granting the political stability of the regime the party organised a civil guard that had to
defend the regime and to maintain contact with the population, that means to re-educate people.
But only in 1925, after Matteotti’s affaires the fascist party became the backbone of the new
system. The legal monopole arrives in 1928, but it was only a formality because the party was
17
trad. “it is the originality of this party that evidence the universal caracteristic of the single-party, that finally arrive in
any situation to reach his objectiv” [our translation] MANOILESCU Mihail, p. 52
11
A difference between the situation in Italy and in the others countries is that in Italy there was
already a King that, in Manoilescu’s vision had the role of representation and that, finally,
sanctioned the fascist party like a constitutional organ. For him the reaction of the Italian crown is
“une prouve de souplesse et de la perennité de son principe”, and he continuing “les regimes
Also the Portugal situation is a particular one. The liberals’ idea was introduced in an artificial
way against the people’s will. In Portugal the role of conscious élite was taken by the army that
This was the first party of this type in all Europe to emerged historically.
For Manoilescu this party has two advantages. The first is that it is not the first party that tries
to become a single party, in fact the Italian fascist party had already resolved all the technical and
juridical problems. Secondly they fought a lot for power: “il a accédé au puvoir après la lutte la
plus longue et la plus dure que l’histoire des parties uniques connaisse”.19
Also for them, like the Italian fascism, “the social nationalism is not an item that we can export”20.
It was a fascist-inspired Romanian political party created by King Carol II in 1938 as the
18
trad. “regimes change, the monarchy still exist, this is the gratest lesons of fascism” [our translation] MANOILESCU
Mihail, p.67
19
trad. ’’he gained power after the longest and hardest battle in the history of unique parties’’[our translation]
MANOILESCU Mihail, p.67
20
GOBBELS M., discours au Congrés de Nuremberg, 9 September 1936.
12
single monopoly party of government following his decision to ban all other political parties and
It was the party of Prime Ministers Armand Călinescu, Gheorghe Argeşanu, Constantin
Argetoianu, Gheorghe Tătărescu and Ion Gigurtu, whose regimes were associated with corporatism
and antisemitism. Largely reflecting Carol's own political choices, the FRN was the last of several
attempts to counter the popularity of the Iron Guard, itself a fascist and antisemitic movement.
Renamed the Party of the Nation (Partidul Naţiunii or Partidul Naţiunei, PN) in 1940, it largely
ceased to function the following year when the Parliament of Romania was dissolved.
In 1938, King Carol II, banned the Iron Guard, which he had supported in the 1930s.
Carol also sought to build up his own personality cult to counter the growing influence of the
Iron Guard, for instance by setting up a paramilitary youth organization known as Straja Ţării in
1935.
fascist movement and political party which functioned in Romania from 1927 into the early part of
Originally founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on July 24, 1927 as the Legion of the
Archangel Michael ("Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihail"), and led by him until his death in 1938,
adherents to the movement continued to be widely referred to as "legionnaires" and the organization
as the "Legion" or the "Legionary Movement" ("Mişcarea Legionară"), despite various changes of
In March 1930 Codreanu formed the "Iron Guard" ("Garda de Fier") as a paramilitary
political branch of the Legion; this name eventually came to refer to the Legion itself.
Later, in June 1935, the Legion changed its official name to the "Totul pentru Ţară" party,
13
literally "Everything for the Country", but commonly translated as "Everything for the Fatherland"
Its members wore green uniforms (meant as a symbol of renewal, and the origin of the
occasional reference to them as the "Green shirts" - "Cămăşile verzi"), and greeted each other using
the Roman salute. The main symbol used by the Iron Guard was a triple cross (a variant of the triple
parted and fretted one), standing for prison bars (as a badge of martyrdom), and sometimes referred
Supporters of a single-party state often appeal to a sense of unity, strength and commonality
that a single-party government can lend a state. They argue that multi-party systems introduce too
much division and are unsuitable for economic and political development.
Another advantage of a single-party state is the tendency to adopt long-term policies while
multi-party states tend to favour short-term policies for the benefit of periodic elections.
A common counter-argument is that one-party systems have a tendency to become rigid and
unwilling to accept change, which renders them unable to deal with new situations and may result
in their collapse.
Finally, one-party states have often been criticized for their disrespect of human rights;
however, this is more a reflection on the ideology of the party in power, rather than on the system
itself.
14
CONCLUSIONS
Corporatism is a movement that appeared in Italy in the context of the rise of the fascist ideas
under the rule of Benito Mussolini. What Mihail Manoilescu tries to emphasize in many of his
works is that there is a difference between Romanian and Italian corporatism and of course, a
difference between fascism and corporatism. Each corporatism movement should be original, based
According to Manoilescu, Romania’s political regime after World War I has not organized
anything and destroyed everything, democracy has not done anything to protect the peasantry, thing
that would have been only normal given the fact that it represents the majority of the country. What
is more, he thinks that in a country in which the main occupation of the people is agriculture, it is
indeed agriculture that is less represented in the Parliament. In this unjust context created by unfair
representation, corporatism has the aim and the possibilities to build a frame in which the social and
In the new created corporatist state, rationalization of economic activities will be fulfilled by
The Romanian spirit has also an important role in the creation process of the corporatist state.
This “spirit” has a strong national character closely related to Germany’s Nazism and Italy’s
fascism but still different and born in the after-war context. The Romanian spirit is important
because it offers not only the social cooperation formula but also protects the economic
independence-autarky, which in its turn is the “sine qua non” aspect of national independence.
The corporatist state will function based on corporations, associations between owners,
entrepreneurs and employees having the purpose of bringing and assuring social harmony and the
21
MANOILESCU Mihail,’’Romania,stat national corporativ,de ce si cum trebuie transformat statul nostru’’,Tipografia
Ziarului Universului,Bucuresti,1934.
15
Manoilescu proves that corporations have a past in our national history, when they were called
guilds.
Manoilescu makes his point on the fact that society was well organized during that period (the
end of the 16th century) because of four important aspects: autonomy, judicial, legal personality,
monopoly over production and allocation of the products and complete professional jurisdiction.22
Corporations can be analyzed from different points of view, having different missions:
The economic mission of corporations is to organize and coordinate national productivity. The
social mission is to solve in a peaceful way, based on mutual agreement and understanding, all
Finally, the political mission of corporations is to politically integrate the local, regional and
national life, by forming in those areas a stable political regime under responsible leaders.
Together with the state, the corporations are meant to be the only political powers and as
Mussolini states, no political life is possible outside the borders of the state; the state is formed from
corporations, therefore even if one is not a member of the corporations, one is controlled by them.23
Thinking that the 20th century will be the century of corporatism just as the XIX century was
that of liberalism, Manoilescu made his case on materialist grounds: properly constructed
corporations would provide the answer to modern man’s moral and spiritual malaise by integrating
Corporatism was the institutional political response to the process of transformation that the
world political economy and its attendant system of international stratification were undergoing.
The 20th century would see the exhaustion of both open internal frontiers and manifest external
imperialism. Borders and loyalties were becoming fixed: from being a variable, territoriality had
become a constant.
22
IBIDEM,pp 8-9.
23
ALEXANDRESCU George,’’Corporativismul mussolinian’’,Bucuresti,1940.
16
Finally, corporatism will permit a state to fulfill the new functions which were being trust upon
public policy to external exigencies. It would emerge first where those imperatives and tensions
were the strongest, it would compel similar transformations in the organizational structure and
Philippe Schmitter enlights the fact that Manoilescu was right but also wrong in many ways as
State control over export commodities, sectoral policies of import substitution, attempts to exert
greater influence in international economic negotiations has been associated with State Corporation.
But there also existed strong differences between what corporatism was and what was meant to be.
First of all, the single ruling party was not the primary or exclusive tutelary agent of the state.
Secondly, although corporatism was meant to help the peasantry, the main beneficiaries have
been national industrial capitalists (who had seized the opportunity afforded by protected markets
and invested in new productive activities), and the victims were peasants and agriculture in general.
Furthermore, Manoilescu’s specific functional hypothesis were wrong too: class inequalities in
access and benefits were not erased, but were institutionalized and augmented, the decision-making
load on the state was not lightened but on the contrary burdened by the proliferation of dependent
functional hierarchies.
The total lack of confirmation of Manoilescu’s assertion was most striking: he hoped that
corporatism from above will result in a secular decline in the rate of profits, a diminution of the
power of private property. Also Manoilescu’s fantasies about European single party ruling regimes
One can easily see that state corporatism in Romania has produced exactly the contrary of
17
Philippe Schmitter offers at the end of his work a comparison between Romania and Portugal
and the reasons for which the situation of state corporatism was the opposite in Portugal.
Corporatism and single party rule have been much successful in Portugal than Romania
Even though they both started in the same year, 1930, during the World War II, corporatism
disappeared from Romania (in 1940).Even coupled with the exercise of monarchic authoritarism,
On the other hand, four aspects of the practice of state corporatism made the difference: the
extent to which state corporatism was preemptive (sought to set out from structures of associability
The second one was the extent to which corporatist state was preventive-almost prohibiting
alternative uses of the state. The defensive mode of interest representation encouraged associations
to act primarily in the protection of special corporate rights. The fourth aspect-the compartmental
State corporatism has not accomplished very much in a positive sense. Aspects of class and
ethnic relations, the distribution of benefits, the allocation of state resources and the outcome of
public policies would likely have been quite different if pluralistic interest politics and competitive
Despite the fact that his theories were wrong in the case of Romania, Mihail Manoilescu was
the pre-communist Romanian political author who enjoyed the widest areal most enduring
international reputation. Not only was he the leading European theorist of corporatism in the very
age of corporatism, but also his thinking is considered to have provided general orientation to direct
24
BARBU Daniel,’’From the politics of science to the science of politics’’.Studia Politica.Romanian Political Science
Review,volII,no.1,2002,pp 273-275.
18
19